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User blog:PersephoneQuarius/2018 April Reflections
So, I have had almost 2 years now writing this wiki. I have only written one real blog post in that same time, and only wrote that because I told myself I would write one explaining why I can't bring myself to write them. Again, this post is in a similar vein - somehow attempting to explain its own paradoxical existence. 2018 Wiki Overview So, the wiki started out as largely being a "parking garage" for all of my unfinished thoughts about Astrology as it became progressively the most addictive and passionate Special Interest I've ever had, eclipsing my prior investment in Quantum Non-Locality and Quantum Erasure by a large margin. The wiki's main goal was to allow me to close all the tabs I would invariably open when I'd go on indulgence binges of learning about astrology through wikipedia and astrotheme.com and various other online astrology hubs. I knew that I would not be able to delete tabs that had good information in them, but I also was in the final months of my PhD and had left my writing to the last minute. So, my compromise was that I could store all of the links (as well as some of my own commentary) on hyperlinked indexed pages of categorised, '''personalised '''data. I knew that this would satisfy the perfectionist urge in me to not waste a single minute of my personal research due to the obligations of employment. Post-poning my research was a bearable compromise, but to simply save the links in a list on some word document or even OneNote folders (as I had been using) was never going to cut it. Why use a Wiki? The greatest benefit to a wiki is that it is made explicitly for mass public consumption, it is structured in a way that brings data into view - as opposed to a word document in which data can be buried by its linearity. The non-linear structure of a wiki forces the user to be a lot more organised in their own planning - you need to use categories wisely and to not go overboard with sub-pages for a list of things that could just as easily have been sub-headings on a single page. A wiki forces you to not only organise your data - but since that data is effectively your own thoughts and ideas, what you're really doing is re-organising the way you think. Effectively, managing a wiki can be an extremely effective analogy for managing your mental state or even mental health. Mental Health Benefits Many neurodivergent people on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum would agree that there is little in the world more frustrating that having an important thought interrupted by some external distraction. Those of us who relate to this idea, will probably also agree that sometimes it feels like you've got so many unfinished thoughts running around in your head, that you find it hard to focus on any single one of them without anxiety about what you're forgetting for those others. It might be as simple as writing an essay while you also need to remember to turn the oven off in 35 minutes, or that you're eating an apple from your left hand and throwing rubbish from your right hand into the bin - not the other way around. Clutter-free neurology It's often not until you've really cleaned a room until you realise what a mess it was before. Once the clutter is gone, you feel a lightness and an aura in the room that you'd forgotten even existed. I would relate the feeling of writing this wiki very strongly with that situation. I feel like I had no awareness of just how many ways my brain wanted to express itself and was terrified of forgetting the ideas it had before I ever had the chance to express them. That's the biggest benefit for me, personally. That I still have all the normal anxieties I've always had, and in some ways they can be even stronger now because I understand them too well to ignore them anymore. But the key difference is that I don't have that same fear about them. I used to experience anxiety and insecurity as a deep shame, something that I needed to keep secret about myself even from my closest friends and family. My brain was in constant alert mode as I attempted to conceal every aspect of my thoughts and feelings that were considered "atypical" - but that was exactly the mentality that led me into my absolute worst mental health situations. By trying to eliminate the "bad" parts of my brain, I became a non-person. I split myself into "good Persephone" and "bad Persephone", the sides of me that people wanted to see and those parts they didn't want to see. The problem was that it was only through the annihilation of "bad" Persephone's traits that I was able to synthesise the performance of myself that then became accepted as the "good" version of me. When I learned to make eye contact. When I learned not to stim while in allistic company. When I learned to wait my turn in conversations. When I learned to hide. When I learned to please the boys around me. Behavioural therapy puts all of the pressure on Disabled people (and/or people with disabilities) to conform to a society values the comfort of the abled more than accessibility of the Disabled. Conclusion Ok, before I conclude I should balance out what I've said with some of the downsides. Downsides Wiki's are actually like a major pain in the ass to maintain. Like, editing a wiki page can take about 10s (and maybe 5 clicks) to even start editing. When you want to edit 10 pages in a row, it can easily take an hour, even if they are straight-forward edits. I really think personal wiki's have incredible benefits, but I currently can't imagine how anyone who isn't already a massive tech-head is going to go through the pain of doing it. Especially since it's *really* annoying on mobile (I add " ?useskin=oasis " to all my links so that mobile users get the desktop skin and hence I can click "edit" to get the desktop editor. I think there's a big gap in the market for any service who can streamline the wiki process and form a sort of wiki-based social network. Upsides I have managed to spread myself incredibly thin with my range of Special Interests over the last couple of years, and it's all thanks to this wiki. Usually, it's hard enough to remember what you were up to with one main idea, but let alone with so many disparate fields as I've thrown in here in these 1748 pages (hmm, that's a nice number 2*2*19*23). I'm also finding that Category pages are amazing and they may end up being the focus of the wiki eventually, because I love how they automatically update with new additions (which saves me a lot of work as a sole-editor). However, one downside is that they don't get included in the page count, so I actually could have 2000 pages if you included the category pages I've written content in (but I doubt 2000 yet). Was this a blog? Not really... Category:Blog posts Category:Blog Posts Category:2018 Writing